Sammy Teusch was a smart, funny, loving boy who liked fishing, robots and soccer.
He studied hard, spent time with his family, and got on well with his classmates in Florida.
In November 2022, his family moved to Greenfield, in central Indiana, and suddenly the boy’s life became a living hell.
Students at Weston elementary quickly started bullying the newcomer. The taunting and violence continued at Greenfield intermediate.
He pleaded with teachers for help, but to no avail.
After months of violence and cruelty, he killed himself in May – his asphyxiated body discovered at home by his 13-year-old brother.
Now in a bombshell lawsuit filed by the parents, the extent of the ten-year-old’s unimaginable suffering has been laid bare – with photographs detailing his injuries.
The shocking filing also includes a text message from one bully appearing to confess to driving Sammy to suicide and a devastating example of how the child was taunted even after his death.
Sam and Nicci Teusch have accused the school district of failing to act and showing ‘callous indifference’ to Sammy, who endured months of misery despite their frantic requests for help.
Bereaved dad Sam told DailyMail.com the wrongful death suit, filed this week at Hancock County Circuit Court, would make schools safer by ensuring teachers crack down on bullies.
‘Their neglect and lack of ability to accept responsibility for their actions can’t be allowed,’ said Sam.
‘I went to the school 20 times or more about all this.’
Greenfield-Central Community School Corporation declined to comment on the 14-page complaint against the district and its trustees.
It alleges that Sammy was assaulted and mocked about everything from his ‘beaver’ teeth to his general appearance, which was grotesquely compared to that of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
Shockingly, a teacher at one point allegedly joined in on the derision, saying the boy did indeed resemble the psychopath from Milwaukee.
In one instance, a classmate allegedly choked Sammy until he ‘saw stars’.
Another hit him so hard with an iPad that Sammy was left with a black eye and broken glasses, the filing says.
On another occasion, a gang of students allegedly chased him through the school and trapped him in a bathroom.
Perhaps the most hurtful bullying mentioned in the lawsuit came from a student who simply trailed Sammy around the school, urging him to kill himself.
Sammy complained to teachers but was largely ignored, the complaint alleges.
He resorted to flipping over his desk in frustration to get the attention of staff — but this led to him being told off for disrupting class.
Sam told the DailyMail.com his boy ‘had the biggest heart along with the best smile’.
‘That made him an easy target and easy for school officials to dismiss and disregard him,’ he said.
‘We can’t let the world be like that.’
When Sammy alerted his parents, Sam and Nicci urged teachers to get involved and protect the boy, the suit says.
Some 20 warnings were filed with GIS principal Bronson Curtis and others, but to no avail.
The suit says teachers took a ‘cavalier’ attitude to Sammy’s welfare and blamed the victim, not his tormentors.
The filing accused staff of even saying the boy was picked upon due to his own ‘mental problems’.
At one point, the exasperated youngster told his father: ‘They don’t listen to me, daddy.’
The final straw, it seems, were phone calls from a bully known in court papers as NT.
On Saturday, May 4, the schoolmate allegedly threatened more violence against Sammy once they were back in class the coming Monday.
‘NT never got the opportunity to carry through on his threats,’ says the complaint, as died by suicide shortly before noon on Sunday, May 5.
Upon discovering his lifeless body, Sammy’s anguished parents and paramedics tried and failed to get his young heart beating again.
Even as the community rallied behind the Teusches and hundreds turned out for the boy’s funeral on May 14, including a commemorative motorbike procession, the taunting continued.
One of the bullies, a girl known as TN, allegedly took photos of Sammy’s open casket before being seen laughing at her phone.
The suit calls this a ‘blood-curdling moment reminiscent of the movie Children of the Corn’.
NT, the tormentor accused of prompting Sammy’s suicide, acknowledged in a remorseful text message that it was ‘all my fault for bullying him,’ the papers show.
The Teusches’ lawyer Brian Grossman says school officials are to blame because they ‘for months callously dismissed and disregarded Sammy’s pleas for protection’ and failed to step in.
The family seeks a jury trial, damages and their legal costs paid.
‘This suit is about more than holding the Greenfield School Corporation accountable,’ says Grossman.
‘It’s about making sure no child ever experiences what Sammy experienced — and no family again experiences the heartbreak the Teusch family can now never escape.’
Greenfield Police Department launched an investigation into the bullying in the days after the fourth-grader’s death.
They found that ‘some bullying’ had afflicted Sammy, both in and outside of school.
But they ended the probe on May 31 without bringing charges against anyone.
Deputy police chief Charles McMichael at the time said there was ‘no evidence’ teachers were neglectful.
The school district’s superintendent, Dr. Harold Olin, has challenged the Teusches’ claims, saying no report of bullying was ever submitted by Sammy or his parents.
Sammy is just one among some two dozen US kids who take their own lives each year after classroom bullying, according to data from the United Educators Association.
The US Department of Education warns that about a quarter of students are bullied regularly.
Those numbers are getting worse, thanks to a youth mental health crisis driven in part by peer pressure and round-the-clock social media.
The Megan Meier Foundation, a Missouri-based nonprofit, says kids who’ve been bullied or cyberbullied are twice as likely to try to end their lives as others.
The Teusches have launched Sammy’s Tree Foundation, a non-profit aimed at helping child bullying victims report their tormentors and talk about classroom problems.
‘Our main goal is to let everybody know that right now suicide is the second-leading cause of death in children,’ said Sam.
‘It’s something I didn’t know, because they don’t let us talk about it. There’s a stigma: You’re not allowed to even say the word.’